At this point Mitt Romney probably regrets announcing to the world he has “binders full of women.”

Not just because the phrase is bizarre enough to have spawned a Twitter account, Facebook page (with tens of thousands of followers), a music video and even its own URL, but because he may have stepped into a complicated political mess involving the accuracy of such a statement and even the underlying policy message is sends.

“That will be the clip that will be seen around the world, Mitt Romney. And the interesting thing about that is, he told the story about the women in his Cabinet, was that was affirmative action. That is affirmative action.

He got all these men. And he said, no, no, can’t we find some women? Go out and find some women. That’s the definition of affirmative action.”

This is not a message Romney intended to send, regardless of whether or not his cabinet included women in top-level positions.

When asked in last night’s town hall about gender in the workplace, specifically equal-pay-for-equal-work, rather than answering the question directly he launched into an anecdote. Romney was in a corner, however, given his lack of support for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, an anecdote may have been his way of diffusing the situation. But the binder story backfired and took on a life of its own.

“What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.”

Some may argue Bernstein is splitting hairs here; does it really matter who approached whom if the end result was a more equitable hiring process? Bloomberg’s Paula Dywer notes:

“What matters is that, once elected, Romney acted on their recommendations. The result was a far more representative leadership staff. In his 2003 cabinet, five out of 14 positions, or 37 percent, were filled by women. A woman lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, served alongside Romney for four years. A State University of New York at Albany survey concluded that Romney had more women in senior positions than any other governor.”

However, the substantive debate, predictably, isn’t what’s buzzing on the internet this morning, it’s stuff like this: